Australian RV resort town overrun by rats

Pity your counterparts on the other end of the globe. The Northern Queensland town of Karumba is a popular Australian RV destination. But as the Australian spring turns to summer, RVers have been turned off by a plague of Biblical proportions. Karumba, the popular RV resort town, has been overrun by the native long-haired rat. The rats’ nickname is appropriate—they’re called plague rats.

Reproductive blast-off

Plague rats don’t carry the mediaeval terror, bubonic plague. Rather, the nickname comes from the seemingly freakish propensity for a reproductive blast-off. Mama rat can have up to 12 little rats at a time, and “pop them off” at an alarming rate of a litter every three weeks. To make for such a population boom requires appropriate weather conditions—a little extra rainfall leading to a good crop of vegetation to both eat and to build nests. While good for the rats but bad for the locals, the Karumba area had plenty of rainfall last season, and the rat plague was on.

Thousands of rats, say local reports, have swarmed the seaside RV resort town. Compounding the problem, the rats can swim, but evidently not as well as they should. The little varmints will swim out to sea, drown, and then are returned by an obliging tide, littering the shoreline with their smelly corpses.

Not just an RV resort town

The tourist economy isn’t the only thing that makes this RV resort town tick, so does commercial fishing. The rats, unfortunately, have created a major issue for fishermen. The swimming rats have found that it’s an easy transfer to the boats—just climb up a handy anchor chain or mooring line. Once on board, they seem attracted to electrical wiring, and the wiring attached to expensive navigation and communications devices becomes a target.

“When the moon came over the town last night, the river was well and truly alive with the bodies of rats,” local fisherman Brett Fallon told ABC, an Australian media network. Fallon said he was finding “at least 100 rats a night” aboard his boat, climbing up the anchor chain from the water below.

“The rats hit the Norman River and just start swimming where the tide and currents take a huge number out to sea,” Karumba’s Mayor Bawden said. “Being hardy little buggers, high numbers reach the other side in Karumba.”

Pied Piper uses different instrument?

Something says that the reports of “thousands” of rats are a bit of an understatement. One report says that Animal Control Ranger Phil Grieve has been collecting dead rats by the hundreds. That’s how many can fit into each disposal bag, he told TV station 10 News First Queensland. “First day, I got 18 — so that’s 1,800” rats, he said. Video clips of piles of rat bodies on the shore, rats trapped in garbage cans, rats scurrying along everywhere. It all makes us wonder. Would the Pied Piper of Karumba use a digeridoo?

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